So when Mark Twain says, "I was born of poor but dishonest
parents," the humour depends on the parody of the genteel Anglo-Saxon
convention that it is disreputable to be poor; but to hint at the
hollowness of it would not be amusing if it did not remain at bottom
one's habitual conviction.
The one American writer who has left the genteel tradition entirely
behind is perhaps Walt Whitman. For this reason educated Americans
find him rather an unpalatable person, who they sincerely protest
ought not to be taken for a representative of their culture; and he
certainly should not, because their culture is so genteel and
traditional. But the foreigner may sometimes think otherwise, since he
is looking for what may have arisen in America to express, not the
polite and conventional American mind, but the spirit and the
inarticulate principles that animate the community, on which its own
genteel mentality seems to sit rather lightly. When the foreigner
opens the pages of Walt Whitman, he thinks that he has come at last
upon something representative and original. In Walt Whitman democracy
is carried into psychology and morals. The various sights, moods, and
emotions are given each one vote; they are declared to be all free and
equal, and the innumerable commonplace moments of life are suffered to
speak like the others.
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